Katherine Talbott Burnside was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1904. She lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia. In 1944 she travelled to Guadalajara, Mexico to study at the art school there and discovered the school was not yet in operation. On the way back to West Virginia she heard about Jean Charlot and realized that he was teaching at Black Mountain College for the summer.

She enrolled for the 1944 Summer Art Institute and found she was far more interested in the work of Josef Albers, and his matière studies had a lasting influence on her work. She was an assemblage artist and her work was widely exhibited. She spent summers in Provincetown and was a founder of the “East Coast Group.”